Sponsor found for Team Mabire-Merron

After several months spent with the large question mark over whether or not they would manage to secure sponsorship, so Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron’s Class 40 campaign for the Global Ocean Race now has a backer... A sponsor has stepped forward in the form of food distributor Campagne de France. Part of France Frais, the history of the company goes back to the 1960s when the provisioning of local shops was carried out by independent regional distributors. France Frais was set up to be a nation-wide network to pool resources and expertise, via its key brands Campagne de France, Terres de Fraîcheur and Au Coeur des Passions, promoting locally produced food, in each region of origin as throughout the rest of France. They also supply outside of France, with for example Tesco being a client of theirs in the UK. While there is a long legacy in France of companies in the food sector backing sailing, for France Frais, this is their first time and interestingly the deal is purely a commercial one, as the management there are not sailors. According to a rather tired Miranda Merron, the deal came off about three weeks ago, the budget just enough to get them through the doublehanded round the world race, although they are still looking to supplement their budget. “At the moment we have only one set of sails and we won’t be able to replace any, and we can’t afford to have a shore crew throughout the race, so we will try and get some extra from somewhere.” That they have managed to get this far has been down to the support their ‘family’ of technical partners ranging from Structures, builder of their Pogo 40S2 to DCNS which built the keel, to Axxon Composites, Facnor, Sparcraft Rigging, Musto, Dubarry, Antal, Lombardini, etc. Right